Does anybody remember writing - or reading - that Tom's Hardware.com had "sold out" and could no longer be trusted to give impartial reviews?

I know I read that somewhere, I think it was here. It was a few months ago, about the time AMD was releasing its Trinity line (i think). I'm pretty sure it was just a random comment by a TR member and not one of the writers for this site - but I'm not 100% sure.

Anyway - is Tom's reputable? Can I believe their benchmarks and general recommendations?

I don't mind if a site is an advocate - for whatever/whoever. I'd just like to know before I read it that's all. Kind of like CPU Magazine, who never has an unkind word to say about anything...you take it for what it's worth. Fun to read every month but basically the opposite of impartial.

Tom's is an interesting data point, assuming you can find actual content on their site (most of the links appear to be ads on their home page now).

Lots of folks don't trust them. But their benchmark numbers tend to line up with others', though there are always outliers. Outlyers. Results that don't fall into that pattern, and it's easy (for me at least) to chalk it up to variance on games that have to be tested manually or whatnot.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.

I do remember this, but it wasn't a few months ago, it was 8-10 years ago. When Tom (The German Doctor) sold the site it lost a lot of it's street cred. I stopped visiting it around then and started visiting a small site called The Tech-Report (dashes and all)

-Playing shooters on a console is like doing brain surgery with an ice-cream scoop-

Jon wrote:I do remember this, but it wasn't a few months ago, it was 8-10 years ago. When Tom (The German Doctor) sold the site it lost a lot of it's street cred. I stopped visiting it around then and started visiting a small site called The Tech-Report (dashes and all)

+1Yeah Tom's lost a lot of good members after he literally sold it. If I remember the first major article after the sell was completely 'phoned in', benchmarks and all. I dont remember the product, intel, amd, nvidia, or Ati.......But Tom's were 'for' it and and all other reviews and sites were 'against' it.

derFunkenstein wrote:Tom's is an interesting data point, assuming you can find actual content on their site (most of the links appear to be ads on their home page now).

Lots of folks don't trust them. But their benchmark numbers tend to line up with others', though there are always outliers. Outlyers. Results that don't fall into that pattern, and it's easy (for me at least) to chalk it up to variance on games that have to be tested manually or whatnot.

Well said. I don't distrust Tom's, but I only go there when I can't find data at TR or Anand or even some other places.

I believe at the time it was related to Intel and AMD. This was when the Athlons were destroying the P4s and somehow Tom's not only gave the P4's glowing reviews but also had a lot of Intel-specific advertising.

And if it were not that, it was an ATI/nvidia thing of the same general concept. That's where the selling out/lack of trust stemmed from. It's long enough ago that it'll be hard to datamine google to see the original complaints.

Yeah they were sold to a big media conglomerate called "BestOfMedia". They still have somewhat OK system-guides and occasional reviews, but they're definitely way below TR in my list of reliable tech review sites.

Scrotos wrote:I believe at the time it was related to Intel and AMD. This was when the Athlons were destroying the P4s and somehow Tom's not only gave the P4's glowing reviews but also had a lot of Intel-specific advertising.

I specifically stopped reading THG, following THG links, or giving info from THG full weight when he published that EPIC and INFAMOUS video, showing the Athlon bursting into thick black plumes of smoke, the P3 locking up, and the P4 sailing along without a care when the heatsink was removed.

While it's somewhat true that Athlons of that era would get very hot and die if you ran with no HSF, it's untrue that all but a rare few motherboards allowed that. The motherboards that allowed firey death were rarer.

It's also untrue that P3s simply locked and shut down. They would get hot enough to damage themselves, just not as dramatically as the Athlons.

The part where the video fully departs reality and enters psycho BS land is the P4 demo. P4s absolutely did and do lock up and hard power off when you remove the HSF. Tom's video cut together at least three different instances (HSF off, throttling/running no HSF briefly/replacing HSF and resuming full speed), but any attempts to replicate that video resulted in blue screens and hardware damage. The P4's thermal management was much better than the competition, that much is very true, but unless THG made the video in a room that was around -40 degrees, the things he showed that P4 doing simply do not happen.

After he sold, the "artistic license" ramped up more and more, so I simply don't ever click those links anymore. The current THG is a bought-and-paid-for publication, and I wouldn't expect anything out of them that works against the main paying advertsiers. It's similar to HardOCP in that way, though the [H] is carried by a huge community, and still tries to be somewhat impartial.

Scrotos wrote:I believe at the time it was related to Intel and AMD. This was when the Athlons were destroying the P4s and somehow Tom's not only gave the P4's glowing reviews but also had a lot of Intel-specific advertising.

And if it were not that, it was an ATI/nvidia thing of the same general concept. That's where the selling out/lack of trust stemmed from. It's long enough ago that it'll be hard to datamine google to see the original complaints.

This is what I basically remember when I was reading Tom's 10+ years ago. It wasn't that their benchmarks were out of whack, it was just the written conclusions that they drew from their data didn't seem to line up and smelled of influence. Then the ads started, and that is what really drove me away. Found Anand and TR, and haven't looked back. The only time I would go back was for their SmallNetbuilder reviews, and that's only because I haven't found anyone else that does decent SOHO router reviews.

I was a SharkyExtreme reader until Alex (Sharky) sold the site and went to tune millionaire's Porsches.

THG was the site that stepped up to fill the void, and they went to hell when they sold out to BestOfMedia. I can't remember whether the rigged/bribed articles were before/after this sell out, but I relegated THG to comparison chart duty (which is now completely replaced with Anand's 'Bench' section).

When THG sold out I switched to Anand and haven't looked back, for that sort of content.

I don't know how long I've been reading TR. I must have lurked for a few years before joining the forums, but I think when I retired from silly overclocking and moved to system-building, TR became my daily read instead of VR-Zone. Over the last decade, TR has improved with age, whilst Anand has shifted his focus away from what I enjoy reading. Nobody has yet come up with a response to TR's inside-the-second analysis and the community here is probably the best public tech-community I've found on the web. (The Meadows/Neely/SSK love-triangle never ceases to amuse me!)

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.

Chrispy_ wrote: Nobody has yet come up with a response to TR's inside-the-second analysis and the community here is probably the best public tech-community I've found on the web. (The Meadows/Neely/SSK love-triangle never ceases to amuse me!)

Gotta agree. Been lurking for a couple years as well and finally joined the forums this year. Been very helpful with all the questions I've had. Now when people come to me with their PC problems I direct them straight to the TR forums.

Chrispy_ wrote: Nobody has yet come up with a response to TR's inside-the-second analysis and the community here is probably the best public tech-community I've found on the web. (The Meadows/Neely/SSK love-triangle never ceases to amuse me!)

Gotta agree. Been lurking for a couple years as well and finally joined the forums this year. Been very helpful with all the questions I've had. Now when people come to me with their PC problems I direct them straight to the TR forums.

Any time my friends want to build or have tech questions I point them here but they just won't sign up or come back in the future and I have no idea why. It's like they are actively avoiding education.

Ever since THG sold out I went to reading other hardware mags and sites like PCXL, maxPC and dailyradar. All of them closed or sold out after the dot com burst and I guess only TR is left.Never really got into Anand since there are very few articles that interest me.

Edit: It was boot that I originally enjoyed reading which is now called MaximumPC, another sellout.

Their benchmark results usually line up fairly well with other sites, but in my opinion their writing isn't the greatest and their site layout/design is very ugly. It's always good to get a variety of reviews/viewpoints from different sites though, especially if it's something you are considering buying.

IMO there are a lot of sites better than TomsHardware. TR, Hardwarecanucks, Pcper, and Anandtech, just to name a few. Anandtech focuses too much on phones/tablets for my tastes, but they have some really smart/knowledgeable writers. They've written some really good SSD articles.

I kicked Tom's to the curb about a decade ago like most, and stick to TR/Anand and some [H]. The [H] forums can even be useful, but they generally reek of people suffering from the too much money/too much time syndromes, where the forum here at TR seems to be both more professional and more sensible.

canoli wrote:Does anybody remember writing - or reading - that Tom's Hardware.com had "sold out" and could no longer be trusted to give impartial reviews?

I know I read that somewhere, I think it was here. It was a few months ago, about the time AMD was releasing its Trinity line (i think). I'm pretty sure it was just a random comment by a TR member and not one of the writers for this site - but I'm not 100% sure.

LOL, Tom's "sold out" almost fifteen years ago. It's been a shill for its favorite brands since before 2000.

Jon wrote:I do remember this, but it wasn't a few months ago, it was 8-10 years ago. When Tom (The German Doctor) sold the site it lost a lot of it's street cred. I stopped visiting it around then and started visiting a small site called The Tech-Report (dashes and all)

Tom himself was no better. I remember when he was a rabid 3Dfx Voodoo fan. That is, until nVidia came out with the TNT/TNT2. All of a sudden nVidia could do no wrong and 3Dfx could do no right. It was sickening to see how blatant it was. It's just one example of many.

I only trust 2 sites TTR ,andand, xbit is ok along with the British site OCC. I read many others. But if numbers do not line up correctly or look skewed. That's when I wait for TR review instead of trusting a site that just rushes a review out just to be 1st.Edit:If i recall correctly way back when toms was where i 1st found the modified drivers for my ATI and NV cards but i cannot remember what the name of the modified driver's were .....too many cobwebs in brain. But i remember they worked great.

vargis14 wrote:Edit:If i recall correctly way back when toms was where i 1st found the modified drivers for my ATI and NV cards but i cannot remember what the name of the modified driver's were .....too many cobwebs in brain. But i remember they worked great.

Buub wrote:I remember when he was a rabid 3Dfx Voodoo fan. That is, until nVidia came out with the TNT/TNT2. All of a sudden nVidia could do no wrong and 3Dfx could do no right. It was sickening to see how blatant it was. It's just one example of many.

FWIW, many of us were like that because these two cards were the first available for enthusiasts. Oh those were the days, Vrock had a Riva 128 that was passed around quite a few times.

I migrated in from Tweak3D, which had a similar experience. They're basically the guys responsible for my commitment of using the pc as a DIY gaming platform, and TR threw off a similar vibe making the migration quick and easy. The 3dfx buyout kept me on ATI for a long time, using omegadrivers/other for tweaks, then ati went downhill and Prime1 convinced me that Fermi was a worthy purchase. The end. I'll probably switch back to AMD for my Christmas present.